Noah Smith: "This is just incredible: @davidminpdx: 'East New York's 129-day stretch without a murder is the longest since the NYPD began keeping modern records'...

...At this rate, NYC will be as safe as Japan.Murder rate declines (from peak) in selected American cities: NYC: ~89% Miami: ~82% Washington D.C.: ~79%... San Antonio: 62% Minneapolis: ~61% Oakland: ~60%.... After looking at numbers for tons of cities in order to write those tweets, I've concluded that the crime wave of 2015-17 was pretty concentrated in three cities: St. Louis, Baltimore, and Chicago.

The likeliest explanation is that these three cities have brutal, corrupt police departments, and that high-profile police killings (Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald) caused long-simmering resentment to rise to the surface, breaking down community trust in the police. It seems to me that the proper response to the highly localized crime wave of 2015-17 is not to increase police militarization or incarceration, but simply to investigate and clean up police departments in St. Louis, Baltimore, Chicago, and maybe a couple other cities...